Fighting the loop, one boredom at a time.

The desert is a vast lonely place, rocks, dunes, dust and sand. You walk for hours upon hours looking for the smuggler base you were told needed to be eradicated to the glory of Shai-Hulud. After the long walk you arrive, just to discover you are still in the desert.

No player wishes to do repetitive tasks just for the sake of reaching somewhere, some may say “journey before destination” but those people didn’t need to hold down the movement key for 10 minutes while moving between more and more levels of the same thing. a few smugglers here, a few Harkonnen soldiers there, but overall, same old deep desert empty wasteland.

“How do I solve it?” I asked myself, “How do I make sure people don’t just enjoy the target but also the work took to reaching it”

And I had two ideas pop in my mind.

1. Shortcuts.
2. Encounters.

Shortcuts: Why walk when you can RIDE.

Thankfully for me, the Dune universe already answered this one for me. In Sands you play a Fremen, and if there is one thing Fremen likes more then killing Harkonnen or conserving water is to ride giant worms around.

Worm riding being such a staple Dune concept was my immediate go to, while QAing and walking around the endless sands I thought “Oh damn, that’s so much to walk, why can’t I just…RIDE A WORM!” and that’s exactly what I did. I added the concept of “Quick Travel” with a Dune twist, ride a worm to cut time when walking big distances.

Ofc, this also means players would just ride all the time, and the world building and the feeling of a vast desert planet will just disappear, so I needed to balance things out. Yes, you can ride worms for quick travel BUT, there are always buts.

1. Only travel to places you already visited. you can’t just discover the whole world map riding worms.
2. Travel costs, you need to use maker hooks and thumpers. the maker hooks are re-usable, but the thumpers are one time items.
3. Travel limits. yes, you can shortcut but not teleport. a worm can only go so far before it tires, and so you will need to get a fresh new worm, which means costing more items (see point 2)
4. Unlock after a quest, don’t start with it so the player can take some time discovering the world around them before they are thought to ride.
5. Have fun with it! The riding isn’t just riding, it’s a mini-game!

All of those points ensured that quick travel isn’t just a hack around pressing the arrow keys, it’s a real integrated system in the game that if used have effects and requirements. like all other things in the deep desert of Arrakis, it has it’s own price.

Encounters: Look! A squirrel!

You know the feeling when you hike or just go on a walk, and you hear something interesting or have a discussion with someone along the way and suddenly Poof! you’re there already and you can’t believe how the time passed so quickly? time flies when you’re having fun is actually a great way to encourage players to interact with a more mundane part of the game.

Ok, so how do we make the walking around feel more interesting, how do we bring in this feeling of “Oh! let’s see what’s going on after that next hill!”

The next idea that pop into my head was “Encounters”. It’s not boring if stuff happens, it might be repetitive walking but stuff happening all around us. Now, random or non-random encounters are not a new thing, this is D&D 101, surprise the player with stuff to make the main story line more lengthy and to add points of interest to the game.

And so I did. I wrote down around 10 random encounters that can happen across different levels, each one has it’s own style based on where it happens.

Deep Desert? Look! a stranded harvester and a smuggler team. Help them or kill them, or simply walk away. the choice is yours but now something happened, and the desert isn’t boring anymore.

Desert? Look! a crew of fellow Fremen needing your help

Harkonnen Base? Look! an execution is taking place, do we save the poor captured Fremen or do we acknowledge that the desert take the weak?

You’re back home at the Sietch, the same old people, the same good friends. Think Again!

As the game progress and you see more levels you will see more encounters, there is also a balancing act here to be had, because you can’t just spam encounters, and at some point the player will learn all of them by heart, making them feel just like grind.

So you either add many types, make them rarer, or… think more about injecting intrest into the Desert.

Until next time! Bi-la kaifa